


Mend with Stitches, Soothe with Song

by DefinitelyNotScott



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Lore 1.0 Assumptions, F/M, Lux & Garen's Parents, Magic, Magical Procedures, Medical Magic, Medical Procedures, Meet-Ugly, Pre-Relationship, Pretty sure it's not a meet-cute when they're unconscious and you give them stitches, Sanya POV, Stitch Witch, Yes that is a Nurse Chapel reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-11-22 18:24:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11385825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DefinitelyNotScott/pseuds/DefinitelyNotScott
Summary: Sanya is tired of picking up the pieces after soldiers neglect their health, but it's not like she's going to let that stop her from doing her job.





	Mend with Stitches, Soothe with Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DemaciasBrokenWing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemaciasBrokenWing/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Plus lots of discussion](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/304119) by DemaciasBrokenWing. 



> [DemaciasBrokenWing](http://archiveofourown.org/users/DemaciasBrokenWing/profile) is a bad influence and will pull you into [his AU](https://burden-and-truth.tumblr.com/background) kicking and screaming, and he likes it when you complain about it.

Sanya sighed, arching her back to ease the ache. Hands on her hips, she held the stretch a while before relaxing into an upright posture. One hand absently reached to massage the back of her neck as she headed for the distinct smell of brewing tea. If somebody had time to brew tea, this wave of patients might have started to wane (she carefully did not think “die down.”) That meant she might be able to grab a drink herself, and power through some of the paperwork for her current patients before she acquired  _ new _ patients.

“Captain Weaver!” Nurse Capilla flagged her down, putting an end to her ambitions. She spared one regretful glance over her shoulder as she followed the shorter man. 

“What have we got?” she asked, lengthening her stride.

“Male, mid-to-late 20s, suffering from lacerations, abrasions, multiple possible fractures, and complications from trying to ‘walk them off.’” Capilla’s voice was very dry. “Claims the king “made” him come in, but at least he’s easy on the eyes. We got him under one of your blankets, but I thought you’d want to do the preliminary exam yourself, since he’s not critical.”

Sanya made a neutral noise in the back of her throat. Her actual preference was to have her patients immediately checked for life-threatening conditions they may have… forgotten… to mention. But she understood that some of the other practitioners had different standards. If her new patient had managed to walk in under his own power her blanket should hold him stable the few moments it took to fetch her. Nevertheless, she picked up her pace.

Entering the room, her eyes skimmed over the tall figure lying on the bed, his pale face framed by dark hair, a gleam of eyes under heavy lids. A small frown creased her brow; the room brightened as she fed energy into the sedative spell and the stitches of the various sigils began to glow. She saw him go limp, slipping down into that deeper state of repose the blanket was supposed to induce. It would be better if he could sleep through the exam if he had fractures, to say nothing of setting bones and stitching lacerations.

“Capilla, my trays,” she said absently as she washed her hands before approaching the bed. She could already see at least one place where the blood was soaking through the heavy, quilted fabric. The lacerations Capilla had mentioned? Or an overlooked puncture? 

She reinforced the spells in the blanket, and the walls reflected the glow that poured off, multiplying the effect and filling the room with light. With the protections saturated, she took hold of the blanket’s edge and folded it back over itself, revealing half of the man beneath it and letting the spells continue to work on the other half. 

Besides the bandages currently failing to keep his thigh from bleeding, he was stripped bare and ready for her to begin. She wondered if he had insisted on undressing himself instead of letting the nurses do their job. It might explain the state of his leg. At this point in her career she’d seen enough bodies, living and dead, that nudity didn’t discomfit her. Someone exacerbating their wound through their own stubbornness, on the other hand, was likely to make her snappish.

“That looked the worst,” Capilla commented as Sanya’s fingers skimmed over the bandages. “Unless the ribs have punctured something.”

Glancing up to his chest, there were minor bruises and abrasions, but nothing indicating broken ribs. She reached to re-cover him with the blanket and nodded to Capilla, who flipped the other side up. 

“Oh, you  _ did _ get yourself caught between a rock and a hard place, didn’t you…” she murmured, because the top right quarter of his body was deeply bruised, and abrasions were generously scored into his skin as well. Capilla might have been pessimistic on the ribs, but Sanya wanted to check his clavicle, and as for that arm… “Tch,” she clucked her tongue at the stubborn idiocy of soldiers, shaking her head. 

Nasty as it looked, the leg wasn’t bleeding out fast enough to kill him, so she had better give the ribs a closer look. If they were broken he could easily be on the verge of puncturing a lung considering his implied activity level. She walked around the foot of the bed. Capilla politely moved out of her way and stood at her elbow while she leaned in for a close visual examination.

She crouched down, tilting her head this way and that, shuffling along the side of the bed to view his chest from various angles. Expanding and contracting, the gentle movements of his breathing seemed fairly even. The area around his seventh rib looked distended to her eye, but the thick pectoral muscle could be hiding damage as well. 

She began palpitating his chest with both hands, feeling for unnatural movement or placement. Her eyes went to his face, searching for signs of extra discomfort. He was comely enough, even with the faint pinch of pain her blanket couldn’t banish marring his features. No wonder Capilla found him attractive. There was some unexpected flexion that signified cracked ribs in her experience, but no obvious breaks. 

She moved her hands down to the seventh rib, and, yes, that  _ was _ a break, though perhaps it hadn’t started out that way. Given the amount of elasticity expected from that area, and the activity level required to pretend you weren’t injured, if it had been broken from the beginning he ought to have punctured his lung, just as Capilla said. The frown returned to her face.

Just to be thorough, she gently pressed her ear to his chest, listening for the familiar struggle of someone trying to breathe through a rib injury, and trying to ignore the tickle of hair against her cheek. Unsurprised by her findings, she stood back up. “Just one actually broken, I think, but I want to handle it before we get the leg.” 

“Tray two?” Capilla phrased it as a question, but was already sorting down to the tray in question.

“Yes,” she confirmed, plucking the ivory-colored patch of wool and the red cotton threaded on the silver needle from their respective compartments.

Soundlessly, she mouthed the words to a hymn as she set three rows of neat, straight stitches into the patch. The edges of the wool began to glow with a warm, welcoming light, and the needle flashed like a sword in the sun as it moved quickly in and out of the fabric. “End,” she said firmly as she pulled the knot sealing the stitchwork. One last flash of light burned away the tail of unused thread and she dropped the silver needle into the stone bowl Capilla held out.

Carefully, she held the patch between two fingers, not yet letting it come in contact with her patient. Next, the rib needed to be aligned. Manipulating it into place with three and a half hands while simultaneously keeping the patch untouched took a little maneuvering, but they managed it. 

Sanya took a breath and concentrated. She placed the patch over the break and whispered, “Mend.” The flash of light left her blinking, but a little gentle pressure on the the rib made her smile in satisfaction.

“Hooo!” Capilla exclaimed. “I could see that one through my eyelids!”

“I gave it a little extra, so that the one rib can support the others while they heal,” she answered the unspoken question. “Let’s deal with that leg now, shall we?”

Capilla nodded, and got the trays back in order while Sanya smoothed the blanket back down and walked back to the other side of the bed. She folded the blanket back and ran a critical eye over the dressing.

“Scissors.” She held out her hand without looking away and Capilla placed a pair of cloth scissors in her palm. Swiftly, she cut through the bandage and peeled it away from the wound, or  _ wounds _ , more accurately. Three deep lacerations marked his thigh, deeper on the outer side and trailing to shallow cuts on the front. Blood welled up even faster without the pressure of the inadequate bandage to slow it.

“Gauze.” She pressed the clean gauze down to slow the bleeding while Capilla removed the old dressing. The whole thigh needed cleaning.

“Tray five and eight. Also, water of purification.” Her trays arranged within reach, she chanted a short prayer over the water before swabbing his leg down. Switching to fresh gauze again, she maintained pressure on the wounds and carefully dried the surrounding area before exploring the edges of the lacerations, pressing her fingertips gently to the surrounding flesh. Worry creased her brow. The skin was warmer than it ought to be. She ran her hand down the inside of his thigh for confirmation. It was indeed cooler both above and below the wounds. Unfortunate, but better to catch it early.

“Capilla, the red bindings, above and below.” While the wide strips of red netting, marked with a pattern of jagged silver figures, were tied around his thigh, she placed a hand on her blanket to reinforce the sedative spell again. Since he had been resistant to the effects earlier, she didn’t want to risk him waking up halfway through the purge spell just because he wasn’t fully covered. “This is going to hurt, friend, best you stay asleep,” she said, voice soft but firm.

“Forceps.” With the bindings in place, she pulled the gauze back part-way so she could search for foreign objects which might be causing the inflammation. “Swab, please,” she said, and peered into the first wound as the blood was wiped away. She was most likely looking for a bit of cloth. Unless the blade had been fouled, most infections came from a fragment of clothing that had been forced in by the weapon at the moment of injury. 

This was where her personal methods really shone. She smiled at the wordplay despite the serious endeavor she was currently undertaking. Whispering a simple illumination spell, she focused it around her hands, calling light to all thread and fabric within the prescribed area. The gauze blazed to life, and even the edges of the bindings, but she ignored them, looking for any glimmer of light in the wound.

The first wound had a miniscule fleck of  _ something _ hidden down it its recesses, she couldn’t even identify it other than the tiny gleam on the tip of her forceps, shimmering through the gore. A scrap of finely woven cloth was buried in the deepest point of the middle wound, no doubt carried there by the initial impact. The last wound had three-quarters of an inch of thread, just thread, with no hint of whatever fabric it had initially been attached to. Maybe it had gotten in there the first time somebody tried to clean and dress the wound.

Once the potential sources of contagion were secured on a circle of clean, white silk, she set aside her forceps and placed her hands on his leg, framing the wounds with her thumbs and forefingers. She glanced up to his face again to double-check his level of consciousness, and since he still appeared serene, she returned her attention to her work and began chanting.

Soft and rhythmic, her voice rose and fell with the ancient words. As she spoke, the silver figures worked through the netting blazed to life, one after the other, until the borders of the bindings burned with a fierce, piercing light. The rhythm of the chant slowed, and each thread of the netting began to glow as well, the warm light twisting up the fine threads, following the fibers. She could remember spinning the thread for these bindings, singing the song of purification as her spindle dropped, and dropped again. 

The light finished saturating the fabric just as the last syllable of the chant dropped from her lips. She took a deep breath to begin the more vigorous and strident Chant of the Purge. Her voice rose high and harsh, each word bitten off as it ended. Her hands began to radiate light and heat, the light coalescing into an incandescent ball, hovering over the wounds. On the penultimate word, she pressed down, hard. A second later, in the ringing silence, the ball of light melted into the wound and drained away, faint glowing after-trails flashing across his skin in branching patterns.

She continued to press down on his leg until the glow faded from the bindings. Once they had returned to normal, she stood up, taking a deep breath. She turned to assess his expression, and once again saw the gleam of eyes. Half-drowsing, he was barely awake, with just enough awareness to raise his lids and look out. 

It was likely a bad idea to pump the sedative spells again. Hopefully he would drift off now that the worst was over. “That hurt, didn’t it, friend,” she said, flexing her tired fingers, feeling her magical resources replenish. He didn’t respond, didn’t even blink. She smiled, relieved that he hadn’t been  _ too _ agitated by the procedure. “That ought to be the worst of it,” she reassured him, her tone soft and soothing. He probably couldn’t even hear her, but at least a friendly voice might keep him calm.

“I’m going to give you a few stitches now,” she said. Really, it was going to be more than “a few,” but he wouldn’t care about details in his current condition. She was only making conversation to lull him back to sleep after all.

Capilla had removed the bindings now, so she could proceed. Her eye ran over her trays; she wanted a copper needle, but which color silk? She turned back to her patient, leaning forward and cocking her head to peer into his eyes. Her lips curved in a smile. “I thought as much,” she said, and picked out the blue. Bending to her task, her curved needle flashed, winking with light. 

Usually she kept her singing almost inaudible to reduce the general racket of the hospital, but with him possibly listening she raised her voice in one of her healing songs. The sweet timbre of her voice fit well with the tune of the song she had chosen, and her hands picked up the rhythm as she worked. Set a stitch, tie it off, snip the thread, new stitch. 

Last stitch finished, she sketched a knot in the air over her handiwork, and smiled at the warm glow the stitches gave off in response. When she looked up, his face was slack, and relaxed in sleep. “Oh, good.” she said.

Next, from her stores she chose a quilted square of white cotton with knot-stitches embroidered around the edges and spiralling inward. She held it in place over the wounds while Capilla wound the bandages around to hold it in place.

“Now let’s change the bedding before we set the arm,” she said.

“Yes, Captain,” Capilla sighed.

Once they had him settled in fresh bedding with a clean blanket, they went about setting his arm, and Sanya got a chance to examine his clavicle. Much to her satisfaction, his arm proved to need a simple splint, and his clavicle was intact.

“Trade out the triage blanket for the analgesic knit one,” she said, writing out a quick course of treatment the nurses could follow. 

“You mean… the analgesic afghan?” Capilla asked, a grin on his face as he caught her eye. She gave a snort to let him know she had heard (and appreciated) the alliteration. Turning her attention back to her instructions, she underlined the order not to discharge him without her authorization three times. Capilla pulled out the squishy bundle of bright green wool in question and arranged it at the foot of the bed, stretching it up over her patient as he rolled the other blanket up into a tube.

“Sure you don’t want to keep him sedated?” The fact that Capilla felt comfortable enough to voice something that could be seen as questioning her judgement warmed her heart.

Honored by his trust, she decided to explain her reasoning. “Earlier, he kept resisting the spell. All the energy he spends fighting to stay awake is energy his body could be using for healing. With a light analgesic, he may wake up, but he’ll be comfortable under the blanket, and liable to fall back to sleep.” She signed the orders she had detailed in the chart with a flourish. “Looking to move into primary care?” she asked with a grin.

“Ha ha.” Capilla rubbed the back of his head, not meeting her eyes. “Well, I could certainly do worse that learn from you.”

“Mmm.” She didn’t want to press him, so she flipped the chart closed and looked at the name on the front. Crownguard? Her eyebrows went up. What high society she was keeping these days! Capilla walked up and she pinned the chart to his chest where he instinctively grabbed it. “Here you go. Orders inside.” She raised a finger to point accusingly at his face. “ _ Don’t _ let him go without my authorization. He’s leaving here  _ healthy _ .”

“Don’t trust him?” Capilla asked with a grin.

“No,” she said. “Too obstinate.”

“You haven’t even met him!” he laughed.

“So you say,” she said, and turned to go. “For now, there’s a stack of paperwork waiting to ambush me in my office.”

Walking her rounds in the morning, she paused before opening his door. She wasn’t sure of his exact title. Etiquette for dealing with nobles hadn’t really been necessary in her life before. They could be touchy about that kind of thing, right? She sighed. Hopefully “Lord Crownguard” would be close enough. She glanced down at his chart to see if any notes had been added as she pushed open the door.

“Good morning, Lord Crownguard, I’m Captain Weaver, and I’m in charge of your treatment while you’re here with us.”

She looked up, to see him lying in bed, propped up on pillows and… Oh.  _ Oh _ . His face looked  _ very _ different when it was animated, rather than relaxed in sleep. The force of will behind his eyes was palpable, a depth of strength and noble character conveyed by expression alone. And his smile… considering she needed to remind herself to breathe after seeing it, breathtaking was the only accurate word. A thread of nervousness trailed down her spine. It might prove difficult to maintain her professional detachment in this situation. 

It was a rare and unique case where she found a new obstacle to overcome at work. Her hands clenched reflexively on his chart. It was a new obstacle, but she would surmount it, like she had all the others. A sudden, vivid sense-memory of stroking his thigh rose up in her mind, giving her pause. Privately, she admitted to herself, Lord Crownguard might very well be a problem.


End file.
